Peace and Quiet
by attackfishscales
Summary: After Lu Ten's death, Iroh travels to the Spirit World, and learns something about his son he wishes he could forget.


**Author's Note:** Written for Runrundoyourstuff on tumblr for donating eighteen dollars to HIAS, a charity that aids immigrants and refugees coming to the US and is fighting Trump's crimes against humanity. She wanted Iroh angsting.

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Peace and Quiet

His days had settled into a comfortable routine. There was tea for himself in the early mornings, before the customers arrived, then the hustle and bustle of the day. Sometimes there were letters from Zuko, and on warm evenings, he made his way to a tree in the agricultural district that he knew Lu Ten would have loved, and imagined he had found his son's body, and laid his ashes to rest here. It wasn't so hard to imagine. Lu Ten may have even seen this tree. It was within sight of the breach they had made in Ba Sing Se's great outer wall.

Sometimes, when he couldn't stop himself, he wondered what his son would have thought of him, living peaceably in Ba Sing Se, serving tea and offering advice to people who knew him only as Old Man Mushi. Would he have been disappointed, would he have thought it a betrayal? When it was all over and they met in some other life, would whoever Lu Ten had become, somehow know and judge him for it? Did it matter?

These were the thoughts that troubled him at home, at night, as he lay down and waited for sleep. They didn't come to him during the day, when he was strong enough to fight them back, but waited for the darkness to creep in around him.

o0O0o

Iroh knew his body remained in the palace rooms afforded to him by his new status as the Firelord's brother, the rooms he had all but been banished to. And yet he could feel the water covering his ankles and feet, and the breeze blowing against his skin. He put his hand on a patch of moss, clinging to the bark of a gigantic mangrove tree and could feel the springy dampness under his palm.

He took a shuddering breath. The tree rested on a thick tent of that rose up from the water, so Iroh had to pick his way through carefully. Back home in the Fire Nation palace, it was daytime, but here, the sky, what he could see of it through the leaves, was full of stars.

Nothing he had read had told him what to expect, or where to go from here, but he was now it to the Spirit World. He had made it this far. He had to trust that the answers he sought would find him here. One of the texts had speculated that the Spirit World its author had found was nothing of the kind, merely a reflection of his own mind. But Iroh knew this wasn't that. This place was serine, tranquil, nothing like the wrung-out mess inside of himself.

He followed the broad, shallow river upstream, the currant tugging almost playfully against his feet. The water deepened and narrowed, the current growing swifter by the moment. Mud billowed up from his footsteps like clouds in the water, and strange fish darted away as he passed. Water flowed downhill he knew, so he knew he was climbing as he trudged against the current, the river dragging against him with every step.

He could hear the waterfall before he saw it. Mist roiled up over the water like smoke. A woman sat with her legs crossed, floating on the water beneath the spray, her enormous hat parting the waterfall, and showing the darkness beyond. At first all he could see of her was rippling white robes and curtains of cascading black hair. But when he drew closer, he could see her face, pale as her robes, pale as the water reflecting the starlight, red whirls crisscrossing her cheeks like mud swirling in the river eddies.

"You were lucky to come upon me first, Iroh," she called out to him. "There are dangerous spirits in this place, ones who would eat you up, and dump your bones in my river. Or worse. The Spirit World is a dangerous place, especially for you."

"Who are you?"

"I was once a human woman, so long ago not even I remember what my name once was. They call me the Painted Lady. I was born in the Fire Islands, and I am the spirit of the rivers that flow through them."

"My Lady," he said with a bow.

"Your grandfather's war has been hard on my waters. It has left them choked with pollution. It is harder still on the rivers of the Earth Kingdom, which now flow with ash and blood."

"My Lady, I am sorry-" he began, but she cut him off with a wave.

"I don't need your good manners, Iroh. They do me no good." She shot him a sly look. "I know you have come here with a request."

He breathed deep. "I wish to find my son and bring him home."

"Your son is not here," she told him. "This is not the land of the dead. Such a place does not exist. As his last breath left him, he was born again into a new life, and not even I know where he is now."

He couldn't breathe. "But-"

She held up her hand. The red swirls flowed down her arms. "I am sorry, Iroh. I cannot give you what you want, nor can I give you the peace you crave. But I can show you your son, in life, and let you see him one last time."

Blinking back tears, he nodded. "Thank you."

"Do not be so quick to thank me, Iroh," she warned. Her finger touched the water below her. It glowed softly, its tumult stilling, until he could peer into the depths and see something other than the river bottom.

o0O0o

The man stood shackled, each of his bound arms held by a Fire Nation soldier. Lu Ten watched him through narrowed eyes, back straight, with all the poise expected of a prince. "You invited my father and me into your home. We ate at your table."

The man trembled with fear, but his gaze was defiant. His green robe was soaked with sweat at the collar, but he refused to plead, even as Lu Ten let the silence drag out.

"And then," Lu Ten shattered the silence he had created. "You tried to slit our throats as we slept. If I had not woken up and fought you off, my father and I would be dead."

"You should be," the man told him, voice shaking. "It would be better for everyone."

Lu Ten eyed him, unimpressed. "My father left me here to see justice done, so that is what I will do. Your family must have known what you were plotting, so I sentence you to be locked with them in your house, and for it to be set ablaze and burned to the ground."

The man's resolve cracked. "No, please, they didn't know! My oldest is only seven, please!"

"You should have thought of that before you tried to kill my father with your children sleeping in the next room," Lu Ten snapped. "Take him to his house. We'll deal with this now."

o0O0o

Iroh gasped. Tears poured down to mingle with the river water, indistinguishable. He remembered the man, and his small village in the northern Earth Kingdom. He remembered Lu Ten playing with the man's son and daughters. He remembered the anger he felt when he awoke to learn what the man had tried to him and his son. He remembered clasping his son on the shoulder, and telling him he trusted him to see justice served. "Why did you show me this?"

She took his face in her hands and wiped the tears away with her thumbs. "I am sorry, Iroh."

She bent low and kissed his brow, and the Spirit World dissolved around him.

As he walked the corridors of the palace, like the ghost Lu Ten both was and never had been, back to his rooms and his body, he wept and wished with all his heart he hadn't gone.

o0O0o

Sometimes, on the precipice of sleep, he could almost smell that soft, clean, milky smell Lu Ten used to have when he was a baby, and almost hear his little boy giggles. He could almost see him gawky and awkward, caught between childhood and manhood. He could almost see him happy, and playing with his baby cousins. He could almost feel his son's arms around his waist, when that was only as high as he could reach, holding him tight. Almost.

Did it matter? Iroh asked that question often in the middle of the night, when sleep eluded him. He was never going to have the chance to tell his son how ashamed he was to be the father of a man who had killed children. He never had to be the one to punish him, or call him to account. Lu Ten was beyond all of that. When they met again in some other life, neither of them would know.

Did it matter? It mattered that a family with three children was dead, but did it matter how it happened, if there was no one left among the living to blame for it? Lu Ten hadn't gotten what he deserved. Nobody ever did.

Iroh had never ordered the death of a child, but children had died on his orders. It was inevitable. He didn't know their names. He had never seen their faces, but he knew they had once lived, and now no longer did. He hadn't gotten what he deserved for this.

It didn't make Iroh feel better about missing his son. It only made it worse.

Once, he had told the Avatar that there was nothing wrong with a life of peace and prosperity. The lesson had come too late to him. He had a life of peace and prosperity, and one of grief and regret. He deserved none of it, and all of it. What was done could not be undone. Lu Ten hadn't fallen so far from his father's tree, and once, many years ago, he had been a man who raised a son who thought burning children alive was justice.

Maybe it would have been better if the Earth Kingdom man had succeeded in killing them in their sleep. Those children would still be alive. Iroh would never have had to mourn his son. Ozai would still be on the throne, and Zuko would be alone. And no one got what they deserved.

On the edge of sleeping and waking, it wasn't Lu Ten the man that he saw and longed to have back. It was Lu Ten the child he had seen grow up, who had not yet done anything wrong. When the darkness and the silence of his own room threatened to choke him, he saw his own child's face in the darkness and wept.


End file.
